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24 March 2012

It makes delicious sourdough, rather more easily than I would have previously thought.

Mamta at Mamta's Kitchen, is looking for a recipe for a loaf that can be made in India, which partly uses atta/ chapatti flour.
Without the final resulting loaf crumbling, and it needs to be relatively easy to make.

Seemingly, there's no need to tinker with flour combinations to my mind, as you can make a wonderful loaf entirely from the chapatti flour. As there probably isn't ready access to strong white bread flour in India, I'm rather pleased with this discovery.

I've promised Mamta and her SIL an easy to follow guide to the method, so please forgive my overusing photographs, coupled with an uncharacteristically long post, for me anyway.

First up, a confession.
I haven't actually tried this with dried yeast, as I don't have any yeast in the house. I have had to resort to estimating the 5g of dried yeast. It certainly won't require any more than that.
But, if you follow this recipe by eye, this part of the recipe shouldn't matter a gram or 2 either way.

So, if you are tempted to give it a whirl. And if you try it with yeast, please let me know if 5g is round about the mark.

The bread looks so lovely Gill, thank you for trying it out. And there have I been, trying to slowly increase to 60% chapatti flour to strong flour, worrying about whether it will rise or not! Thank you for this. I have already added it to my mamtaskitchen facebook page; http://www.facebook.com/mamtaskitchenI will add it to my site, just as soon as I can get around to it.

Great step by step Gill and lovely looking loaves, where do you get your chapatti flour from ? I have a small bag from T...o's in the cupboard I might try your loaf as I haven't got round to making chapatti with it!

Made the bread; I used 5 g dry yeast. It took about 6-7 hours for the final 'rise'. Looks great, slices well. It is a tiny bit heavy, may be more time to rise? The taste is like a sour-dough loaf, wonderful, an added bonus! For people in India, who are mostly used to a white, pre-sliced bread, it may be a little bit heavy, so I am thinking 80 chapatti four/20 white flour mix, what do you think?I have made sandwiches and am going out bird watching in a bit. let's see what my friend thinks!

There are two sorts of dried yeast commonly available here. You can add both into the flour in fact, but one sort is traditionally activated (or 'proved' to work) in a little warm water first.

They have seriously confusing names! A little bit about them here http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/yeast. I use both, my preferred variety is the Allinsons in the pale green sachet or tub, but it is more expensive of course. I am wondering if a little pinch of ascorbic acid, (VIt C powder) in the dough, Dan Lepard always recommends for wholemeal flour doughs, though purists say it is an additive, might help with the lightness? What an exciting project you two are working on!

Gill, I am thinking of trying the chapatti flour bread with 80% chapatti flour, 20% plain flour (not strong flour, which is not easy to find in India), and have 1/2 cup yoghurt making up the volume of the water/oil mix. Yoghurt works in naan, and I have made bread from left-over naan dough before; http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=13589, so it should work. What do you think?

Just one more thought, I am finding 100 Chapatti flour bread tasty, but a bit heavy to digest. I get this feeling of heaviness for quite a while afterwards. I don't know why this should be so, as I am used to eating chapatties! The bread is nearly gone now. Tomorrow I have to go for a funeral in London, so may try the 80/20 bread on Sunday. I use 'medium' chapatti flour, which still has quite a lot of roughage, which may be making it heavy. So I might give it a quick sieve to remove some of that, to bring it closer to 'fine' chapatti flour. What do you think?

That's a shame you're finding it difficult to digest though - I know how miserable that feels. Sieving the flour first is a great idea. You can dust the surface of the loaf with the husk afterwards if you so wish.

Hi Gill, Mamta and KavitaFrom my own bread making experience at Chartreuse you need to feed the yeast something to get it multiplying to produce carbon dioxide. I used honey and white sugar but you can also use tomato purée. What you use will not taste in the bread. Also, I am sure you know this, but salt will kill yeast. Put the salt in the flour with the oil and the yeast water and honey in a hug. Mix them once the yeast water has a good head of froth. RegardsAndrewAlthough I'll give you a hug, that should read 'jug'! I can't edit the post on my I-phone :-)

Gill!!! I love your blog - your paintings are just gorgeous!!I am dying to have a go at this bread, and have printed off the recipe. Funnily enough I was only wondering last night if one could make bread with chickpea flour, or chipati flour - then I accidentally ended up here!!Emma (aka Hungryhousewife!!)